Saudi Women Want to Drive

Neither Islamic law nor country's constitution forbids female drivers
By Kevin Spak,  Newser Staff
Posted Sep 18, 2007 1:13 PM CDT
Saudi Women Want to Drive
A woman gets in a taxi in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, Monday, Sept. 17, 2007. For the first time ever, a group of women in the only country that bans female drivers have formed a committee to lobby for the right to get in the driver's seat. They plan to petition King Abdullah in the next few days for that...   (Associated Press)

A group of Saudi women is trying to regain a “stolen right”: driving. The group will deliver a petition to King Abdullah this week demanding the right to get behind the wheel. But prospects for lifting the world's only ban on female drivers are cloudy, the BBC reports, because of concerns about women mixing freely with men.

Nothing in Islamic law or the Saudi constitution prohibits women from driving. The ban only became law in 1990, although it was unofficially in place long before that. King Abdullah—who one Western diplomat described to the Telegraph as "about as liberal as an 80-year-old Saudi gets"—has said he thinks women will someday drive in his kingdom. (More women's rights stories.)

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